


Give Me Something I Can Hold On To

by OurEchoes



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn, the turtle CAN help us folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21856636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurEchoes/pseuds/OurEchoes
Summary: Bev told him in the murky hours between defeating Pennywise and his alcohol tainted memories of the night that proceeded about her experience in her old apartment.“It was so weird,” she’d said, confusion writ in her tired features. “She’d -he’dsaid’no one who dies here ever really dies’. I think he was taunting me, ya know?”Richie did know, thought for sure that it had been nothing more than a way of throwing in Bev’s face that they hadn’t killed It as kids. It had a tendency to be rather predictable in it’s reasoning, almost childlike in the taunts It made. Hindsight twenty twenty, maybe they’d both underestimated what It was saying.-Richie buys a phone that can call the afterlife. Eddie’s never been more thankful that Richie’s a stubborn asshole.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	Give Me Something I Can Hold On To

When they’re eight years old, Eddie skins his knee during a particularly rowdy game of tag.  
  
“ _Fuck!_ ”  
  
Richie flinches and feels his stomach do a weird twist at that. When they entered third grade, Richie made it loudly known to everyone around him that he was going to start cursing and there was _nothing_ anyone could do about it. Eddie had only stared, his jaw hanging open, and whispered soft enough that Richie didn’t have the heart to call him on it ’ _mommy says we can’t do that_.’  
  
That’s how he knows something must be really wrong when Eddie skins his knee. Not because there’s blood running toward his ankle but because he swore like he hadn’t a thought in the world for what his mom says he can and can’t do.  
  
“Let me see, Eds,” Richie says and leans close before he can think about either of their personal bubbles. Eddie grimaces but he doesn’t pull away when Richie grabs the uninjured part of his knee, twisting it towards him.  
  
It looks... bad. Richie can’t really lie about that. There’s gravel embedded in the surface and a large gash along the front that Richie’s pretty sure is the source of all the bleeding. He prods at it gently and Eddie hisses beside him, his eyes gathering moisture when Richie glances sidelong at his face.  
  
“I think you’re going to need a lot of bandaids, dude.”  
  
Eddie sniffles and frowns.  
  
“I only have a couple in my backpack, I didn’t have anywhere to fit them,” he says, gesturing into the grass a few feet away from them. “There’s neosporin in there, too, but Richie we have to clean the scrape first. I can’t put bandaids on a dirty wound, my mom says-“  
  
Richie’s about to say something when Eddie grabs his elbow, fingers tight enough to hurt. His eyes are so wide Richie worries they’ll pop right out.  
  
“ _Richie_ ,” he says like his name is a lifeline. “Richie, my _mom._ ”  
  
Which, fair enough, that fully warrants eye popping stares and death grips. Sonia Kaspbrak is a bitch of a woman on a good day, according to Richie‘s own mom whenever she has wine with dinner. Richie thinks of every day of school this year that Eddie’s missed because his mom saw a welt or a new freckle and thinks deliriously that he’ll never see Eds again if he doesn’t fix this.  
  
“Lets go to my house,” he says, grabbing Eddie’s hand and pulling him along before he’s even hatched a plan. He picks up both their backpacks and keeps moving. “My mom and dad are at work and we have a first aid kit.”  
  
Eddie sniffles again but this time it’s worse because Richie can tell he’s really about to cry.  
  
“But Richie she’ll still _see it._ It doesn’t matter if we clean it good if she _sees it_.”  
  
They stumble over the sprinkler in Richie’s front yard on their way to the door. The driveway is blissfully empty like Richie said it’d be and the house is quiet as they step inside, the only noise the sound of Eddie sniffing back tears.  
  
“Eds, how about we clean this up and then try to figure out how to hide it before you get all whiny on me, okay?” he says as he drags Eddie along to the kitchen. He doesn’t actually care that Eddie is upset, he thinks he would be too if he had Eddie’s mom as a parent. He just can’t stand to hear him crying, honestly. It makes Richie’s insides do a weird twist that he doesn’t like to think about.  
  
They set about washing off the skin and removing any gravel, Eddie clearly trying not to wince the whole time. Richie takes out the first aid kit from one of the cupboards and smiles at the relief on Eddie’s face. After they patch him up using way too many bandaid’s, Eddie’s relief dissipates.  
  
“My mom’s not going to miss that, dude.”  
  
Richie frowns, glancing at their handiwork. His eyes catch on the dark green shorts Eddie’s wearing and he feels like there should be a lightbulb above his head. He runs back to his room and grabs a pair of jeans from his clean clothes, tossing them to Eddie when he comes back.  
  
“But my shorts aren’t dirty?”  
  
Richie snickers.  
  
“It’ll cover up your knee, dumbass.”  
  
Eddie brightens at that and runs to the bathroom to change.  
  
Later, after Eddie’s effectively hidden the damage and they’re on their way over to his house, he stops short on the sidewalk. Richie looks at him for any sign of why he’s stopped walking and feels his chest do something funny when he meets Eddie’s eyes.  
  
“You really saved me back there, Rich,” he says, a soft smile lighting up his face. “I would have been in so much trouble if you hadn’t helped out.”  
  
Richie laughs to keep from blushing.  
  
“You know me, Eds. Always saving your sorry ass.” He rubs the back of his neck, tries to muster up the courage to say what he wants to. It takes more effort than he’d admit it does. “You’re my best friend, Eddie. I’ll always help you when you need me.”  
  
Eddie doesn’t say anything in response, just wraps Richie up in a hug before sprinting off to his house, throwing a big grin and wave in his direction before going inside.  
  
Richie smiles all the way home.  
  
-  
  
When it’s over, when the monster they’ve all been running from for twenty seven years is dead and Richie has to be drug out of Neibolt kicking and screaming, he thinks about skinned knees and promises he couldn’t keep and cries so hard he thinks maybe he’ll never be able to stop.  
  
-  
  
When they get back from the quarry, Richie beelines for the Inn’s bar.  
  
“I’m drinking myself into a fucking coma so please refrain from asking literally anything of me for the rest of the night.”  
  
Bev smiles, sad and tired, and it’s too much, everything is _too fucking much_. Richie grabs the highest proof bottle of Scotch he can find and is upstairs before anyone else can look at him like they think he might fall apart at any second. It’s not an inaccurate assessment, it’s just too close to the truth and Richie’s rather done with the whole ‘sharing the load’ thing.  
  
_‘They can share loads all they want_ ,’ he thinks because he’s also a child. _‘I’m stuffing my load as far down as I possibly can_.’  
  
-  
  
The rest of the night he remembers in mental snapshots. One moment he’s drank his way through half the bottle in record time, the next he’s stumbling to the bathroom and tripping over a towel he left out, falling on his ass and laughing about it. He vaguely remembers leaving his room in pursuit of something to eat only to gag at the mere idea of following that through. Then he somehow ended up on a sofa in the living area of the house? It’s all a blur but somewhere along the way, Bev came into the picture and then he was asleep.  
  
At least, that’s what Richie assumes as he wakes up with his face in her lap. He has the mind to warn her about the vomit crawling up his throat by pushing himself off her legs and scrambling upwards.  
  
“Oh shit,” she says, jumping up and running for a trash bin across the room. Miraculously, Richie is able to stave off throwing up until she sits it in front of him. He’s retching hard enough that his entire body aches with the action. Beverly gingerly rubs along his shoulder blades, hands an anchor Richie hates realizing he needs right now. “You really should keep in mind how old we are, Rich.”  
  
Richie waits until his present wave of sick passes before snorting at the remark.  
  
“Yeah well I’ll try to remember that next time I want to not feel anything.”  
  
Bev sighs, hand still easing circles into his skin.  
  
“Like I told you last night, it’s good to feel things. Even grief.”  
  
Richie rolls his eyes but frowns at her reply, searching his memory for any signs of what she’s referencing. She sighs again, this time deeper and with a catch in her breath.  
  
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be saying that, if it were Ben I - I think I’d be beside myself. We all loved Eddie, I _know_ we did, but I can’t begin to imagine how you’re feeling, Richie.”  
  
Richie tenses, sure that Bev must feel the reaction.  
  
“What do you mean by that?”  
  
Bev drops her hand away.  
  
“Did... did you blackout last night?” she says, her voice clearly anxious.  
  
Richie looks up at her and feels his stomach drop worse than when he first woke up with the intense need to hurl up his insides. She’s looking at him so hesitantly and he knows with a sudden bout of clarity that _she knows_ , that he must have told her, and it’s enough that he throws up again despite there being nothing left in his system. Bev sniffs and Richie can’t look at her, doesn’t know how he ever will again.  
  
“Oh, _Richie_.”  
  
-  
  
After that, Richie literally only has the energy to go to bed. And he doesn’t wake up until the next morning, a soft but persistent knocking on his door startling him awake.  
  
“R-Rich,” Bill says through the wood between them. “We ordered some p-p-pizza, we’ll leave a box for you in the f-fridge down there in case you want any, okay?”  
  
Richie doesn’t feel up to answering, just sighs loud enough that Bill must take it as a reply. He seems to hesitate at the door, the shadow of his feet still dark under the edge of it for several moments. Then he wordlessly walks away and Richie just closes his eyes, intent on going back to sleep no matter how much his brain is screaming at him about it.  
  
-  
  
Richie knows he’s worrying his friends. He hasn’t left his room in at least a day now and he hasn’t eaten in almost twice as long.  
  
’ _They don’t deserve what you’re putting them through_ ,’ he thinks bitterly when he reaches the second day of nothing but sleep. ’ _They lost him, too. You’re not special_.’  
  
But that thought comes too close to talking about what he’s been avoiding, feels so damn close to scratching the surface of everything vulnerable and delicate in Richie that he swallows down the deep ache in his stomach and closes his eyes again. It’s hard to sleep when your body is begging for nourishment, when hunger makes a home in your throat. Richie imagines his body beginning to rot from the inside out and remembers a doll full of maggots before he can stop himself, rushing to the bathroom when the memory doesn’t fade.  
  
It hurts to dry heave up bile on an empty stomach but it’s not Richie‘s first rodeo. This might be the worst it’s ever been but Richie’s spent a lifetime with his fear and sadness being a tangible, physical thing. Anxiety is cluttered up insides, organs too twisted to ignore; loneliness is the stale smell of his pillow after he’s gone three days without showering. He remembers his twenties as a decade stuck in bathroom stalls - sometimes with his head bent in them, other times crying after a drunken handjob. Richie wonders how he’ll describe grief someday and thinks maybe it’ll be as close to missing a limb as he’ll ever get, that maybe the hollowed out feeling he has behind his chest isn’t far off from a phantom pain.  
  
He sleeps on the bathroom floor, red rimmed eyes and heavy limbs too tired to move, and wonders how someone lives with something like that.  
  
-  
  
Ben and Bev are the next ones to knock on his door.  
  
“Hey, Richie, sweetie,” Bev calls to him, her voice similar to how one might speak to a startled animal. “Something’s come up and Ben and I... well, we have to leave now.”  
  
She waits, probably for some form of acknowledgment, and doesn’t say anything again for several moments. Richie scrubs a hand through his hair, fighting down the urge to beg them not to leave. It’s not that he needs them right now, he honestly isn’t sure if he wants to see anyone at all for as long as he can prevent it, but the quiet knowledge that they’re there in case he did helped. He thinks it did, at least.  
  
Ben sighs and Richie imagines him rubbing a comforting thumb over Beverly’s knuckles, imagines them looking at each other with the saddest doe eyes.  
  
“We just wanted to say goodbye, Richie. We understand if you’re not ready to talk to anyone yet,” Ben says and Richie’s glad Bev has him now, finds he can’t even fault them their mutual happiness among all of his hurt. “You have our numbers, right?”  
  
Richie swallows thickly, has to really force the words out of his mouth.  
  
“Yeah, I do.”  
  
“Please call us, Richie. About anything, whenever you need to,” Bev says. She sounds on the verge of tears and Richie hates himself a little more for it. “We love you, you know that right? We love you a lot, Trashmouth.”  
  
Richie’s eyes hurt, the skin around them thin and cracked from crying more than a person has any right to, and the sting of new tears makes him nearly have to grit his teeth. He means to say _yes, of course I do_ , but what comes out is a half choked sob.  
  
“Ditto,” he says when he can’t bring himself to say anything else. They hear it, he knows they do, and that’s enough to give him the energy to move back to his bed. The front door shakes the house as it shuts and Richie wonders what it must be like to close this chapter of their lives, worries he’ll never make it past it himself.  
  
-  
  
The knocking on the door the next time he hears it is stern and harsh against the quiet of his room.  
  
“Richie,” Bill says, his voice an authority Richie doesn’t want to confront. “I love you but this has to stop.”  
  
There’s a pause Richie’s sure Bill leaves for him to reply, a huff of annoyance escaping when it becomes apparent he won’t.  
  
“Richie it’s b-been _three days_. You haven’t eaten, I kn-know you haven’t, and you _n-need to_ , Rich.” He’s quiet for a second, seeming to collect his thoughts. Richie imagines what this must be like for him, thinks he wouldn’t know what to do at all if he’d just lost a friend - _two_ friends only to have a third wasting himself away in the room next door. “I’m not going to let you starve yourself, man.”  
  
And Richie gets it, he really does. He wishes he could claim ignorance to the absolute worry that permeates every word out of his friends’ mouths but he’s much too raw for them not to hit him like fucking arrows to the heart. He’s causing them pain and he thinks if he weren’t already batting zero in the keeping his shit together department, that he’d probably be even more of a mess right now. Richie’s a fucking comedian, he’s spent his entire adult life trying to make people laugh. He doesn’t know how to handle doing the opposite.  
  
When he sits up in bed, the bone deep ache in his back hits his spine like wildfire. Richie’s no stranger to depression and the effects it has on him; he’s forty years old and incredibly fucking lonely (see _comedian_ ), he’s known depression like a tired friend that he meets for coffee on the weekends. He could handle the emptiness, the endless void of worry that this is all life has to offer him.  
  
The weight of grief is different, suffocates him with every breath. Every moment awake he is dragged down by loss, feels it tear apart his insides. It’s not something he can distract himself from or try to cover up with poor attempts at self deprecating humor. It’s clear on his face; he can see it in the shot blood vessels of his eyes, in the sickly color of his skin. It’s inescapable and he’s fumbling his way through existence in the aftermath, a clear line of delineation separating a version of him that lived without this intimate pain and the person he is now.  
  
Richie knows in a way he wishes he didn’t that the moment he leaves his bed and walks to the door, he will be stuck in a world post Eddie. The hurt inside him will be real more than it already is. He’ll have to see the pity on Bill’s face, something he’s been avoiding since that first night with Beverly, and it’ll crumple any will left inside of him to deny his reality for what it is.  
  
And for a moment, Richie contemplates waiting a little longer. He could bite back any apologies that sit heavy on his tongue, could pretend to be asleep through Bill’s insistent pleas. None of them would fault him, not really. Of one thing he’s certain, Bill would understand. He’d probably be disappointed but he wouldn’t hold it against Richie. The comfort of that thought is insidiously potent, enough so that Richie considers it.  
  
Still, Richie stands up. He walks away from his bed and swallows down the terrible soreness in his throat. His entire body is stiff with disuse and his stomach feels almost foreign to him, like a distant after thought. When he opens the door, he only has a moment before he is nearly knocked over by the man in front of him. Bill Denbrough may be almost seven inches shorter than him now but he still has the strength to crush Richie in his arms.  
  
“You smell t-terrible, Rich,” he says, voice muffled by Richie’s chest. Richie tries to ignore the distinctly wet quality of his words. “If you don’t bathe soon, I w-will spray you down with a f-f-fucking garden hose.”  
  
Richie pats the top of his head, heart in his throat.  
  
“Maybe that was the plan all along, Big Bill. Get you alone in a big house and wait for you to try to forcibly shower me in your affections.”  
  
The laugh he gets makes getting out of bed worth it, all things considered.  
  
-  
  
A week passes much faster after that. Richie cleans the room when he realizes a maid will never come along. He showers when he can’t stand the feel of his own skin anymore. He eats even when every fiber of his being protests and he considers it a success when he gets half of his meals down.  
  
All the while, Bill stays. He helps Richie change the sheets to his bed. He casually hangs a bag of new, clean clothes on Richie’s door handle while he’s sleeping. He drives them to a diner across town and smiles when Richie re-enacts _The Gold Rush_ with his dinner rolls.  
  
It’s all very nice and easy. And if Richie squints a little, he can almost pretend he isn’t falling apart inside.  
  
-  
  
“So when were you planning on telling me you’re leaving?”  
  
Bill looks up from his phone, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. Richie feels annoyance brewing in his gut at the feigned surprise. It’s selfish but at least it’s better than the perpetual state of agony he’s been in.  
  
“I... I don’t know what you’ve c-convinced yourself is happening, Rich, but I -“  
  
“You what?” Richie interrupts, unkindly. “ _Aren’t_ planning on leaving soon? That seems unbelievable.”  
  
Bill frowns, setting his phone down on the table. The burger joint they’ve found theirselves at continues to bustle about, nonplused by the tension between the two.  
  
“I’m not, actually.”  
  
Richie continues to stare Bill down. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t believe him, can’t figure out what the nasty feeling in his gut is. He thinks maybe he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his friends to all leave him behind in the wake of their mutual tragedy and forget how broken up he’s been. There’s a selfish, ugly part of him that desperately wants to keep them all as close as possible and he has a hard time shoving down the ‘ _don’t go_ ’ on the tip of his tongue every second of the day.  
  
Sure, Ben and Bev have already left and Mike has been busy making arrangements for his big road trip but Bill is the last of Richie’s oldest friends - there’s a special understanding between them from years spent growing up together. The love Ben, Bev, and Mike have for Eddie and Stan is just as real but Richie thinks they’re all smart enough to realize there’s a longer history there amongst the four of them.  
  
“You can’t stay here forever, Bill. You have a _life_ to go back to - a job, a _wife_ \- you can’t just brush that all aside because I’m a fucking mess.”  
  
Bill softens, his frown slipping into a sad sort of smile.  
  
“H-Haven’t you considered that m-maybe I’m not doing this for you, Richie?” He looks away, reaching for a paper straw wrapper and tearing at it as he speaks. “I... I don’t know if I’m ready to go back yet, if I’m being honest.”  
  
Richie’s admittedly surprised. He feels bad that he assumed Bill would be ready to move on as quick as everyone else seems to have been.  
  
“Well, I sure do feel like a dick, now.”  
  
Bill chuckles.  
  
“Nah, you had good reason to think s-something was up.” He drops the wrapper and looks Richie in the eyes, a spark of his younger self flickering in his gaze. “I don’t - I don’t want to _alarm_ you b-but there’s a weird feeling I get when I think of leaving. I don’t know why, Rich, but it f-feels like something’s been left unfinished. I’m honestly a bit worried.”  
  
Richie furrows his brow and realizes he hasn’t even thought about leaving yet, at least not in any real way. He’s gotten as far as wondering if he ever will before shutting down and pushing any tangible plan making off for another day - only the hypothetical day has yet to come.  
  
Now when he gives himself the grace to think about it, he realizes there’s the same feeling Bill’s describing looming in the background of his thoughts. It could be nothing; they’ve spent a lifetime with horrifically traumatic childhoods weighing down their every decision - who _wouldn’t_ have a base state of indecisive panic after going through the things they have? The rational part of him can’t help but clutch onto that hypothesis.  
  
The intuitive part of himself, though? He’s ringing every alarm bell in Richie’s body and Richie has to try his damnedest to not hightail his ass out of Derry.  
  
Bill narrows his eyes, pointing an accusing finger in Richie’s direction.  
  
“You feel it too, d-don’t you? Wait, you d-don’t even have to answer that, I _know_ you do.”  
  
Richie sighs, resting his chin on his fist.  
  
“Okay, and? What the fuck do we even _do_ with that, Bill?”  
  
“I don’t know!” Bill throws his hands up, looking all the more ridiculous for it. “I have no fucking clue, Richie. Something’s _wrong_ and I don’t know what we can do about it. I just know we’ve gotta do something and I can’t bring myself to leave until we do.”  
  
Bill ‘ _big dramatic gestures_ ’ Denbrough and his everlasting need to tackle his problems head on and (often enough) completely on his own has no idea how to handle the situation they’ve found their selves in. That should honestly be a sign directly from God that Richie should leave, that they both should. Really all it does is set something aflame in his bones again, a purpose he doesn’t understand but desperately wants to figure out. He squashes down the tiniest blossom of hope in his chest before it can even give a name to what he’s hoping for but he lets the fire build up his spine, lets it take root somewhere behind his skull.  
  
“Well if I know Derry at all, we’ll probably have the answer shoved in our face in no time.” Richie ruffles Bill’s hair, much to his obvious chagrin. “Calm down and eat your burger, dude. You’re scaring the locals with the intensity you’re vibrating at right now.”  
  
“Richie, we _are_ the locals.”  
  
“Precisely.”  
  
-  
  
At some point in the days after Richie and Bill’s big burger joint realization, Richie has another, much less worrying one.  
  
“Huh,” he says aloud, causing Bill to peer at him over the book he’s reading. They’re both sitting in the Inn’s lounge area - Richie staring blandly at the television while a woman advertises gaudy jewelry to be paid for in monthly installments. “Just realized I haven’t had a phone since it broke while fighting Ronald McFuckface.”  
  
Bill snorts, turning back to his book.  
  
“P-Probably haven’t gone this long without one since the n-nineties, huh?”  
  
Richie hums in response.  
  
“You going to buy a new one?”  
  
“From where? The local RadioShack?”  
  
Bill sits his book down, the pages crinkling against his lap.  
  
“You do realize there’s a W-W-Walmart in town now, right?”  
  
Richie watches the woman on TV try on a hideous green and gold broach, wondering what monster decided to leave it set to HSN with no controller in sight.  
  
“Where’s the sense of abandon in that? I could never get RadioShack vibes from a Walmart. There’s something simply irreplaceable about being in a chain store you totally forgot was still a thing until, like, five seconds ago that Walmart can’t touch, man.”  
  
Bill shakes his head from the corner of Richie’s eye, turning the page of his book.  
  
“Don’t come crying to me when you get st-stuck with a f-f-fucking flip phone because Walmart isn’t _nostalgic_ enough for you, Rich.”  
  
-  
  
Because Richie’s pride is a sensitive and finite thing, he decides to stick to the first phone he lays his eyes on in the mostly empty store.  
  
“Ya know what? Totally fair,” Richie says to the universe as he locks eyes with an honest to god flip phone in the year 2016.  
  
He walks over to the plastic incased prepaid device and turns over the package, briefly scanning the details before shrugging and walking to the register. A thin, pale, red haired teen sits behind the counter, paging through a comic book in his hand. Richie thinks maybe Derry coming in first in the number of missing kids in the nation almost pales in comparison to its number of naturally occurring gingers as he sets the phone on the counter.  
  
The kid doesn’t react so Richie clears his throat, watching with amusement as recognition washes quickly over his features when he looks up.  
  
“Holy fuck, you’re - “  
  
“Yeah, _I know_ ,” Richie says, fighting the smirk that’s threatening his face. “Sorry to interrupt your reading but I’m holding my facade of actually wanting to buy this piece of shit together with Elmer’s grade glue and I really don’t want to back out on a challenge I gave myself.”  
  
“Oh,” the boy - his name tag says Kevin - says, glancing down at the flip phone with a confused look in his eyes. “Are you... are you _sure_ this is the phone you want to buy? I’d be shocked if we even sold minute cards for this thing.”  
  
“Yes. One hundred percent, yes. Do not make me question my life choices right now, they are fragile and will absolutely break under inspection.”  
  
Kevin shrugs, scanning the package a few times and inputting the barcode when it doesn’t work.  
  
“So,” he says, being very obvious in a forced nonchalance way. “You’re famous. And in Derry.”  
  
Richie sighs, tapping his fingers along the counter.  
  
“Yes, I am aware.”  
  
Kevin furrows his brow, looking at Richie questioningly.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Richie closes his eyes and breathes deeply, thinking of the easiest answer to the most loaded one word question of his life. Distantly he’s aware that his answer to a teenager in Bumfuck, Maine, matters little to none in the grand scheme of things, but. Still.  
  
“I grew up here,” he decides on and wonders if it sounds as uncertain as it feels.  
  
Kevin just shakes his head, ringing up the total when the register finally recognizes the barcode.  
  
“Sucks to be you,” he says.  
  
Richie almost laughs.  
  
“More than you’ll ever know, kid.”  
  
-  
  
Bill doubles over with the sheer force of his laughter upon seeing it.  
  
“It’s really not that funny, Big ‘ _Oxymoron_ ’ Bill,” Richie says, glaring at him with no real heat.  
  
Somehow it’s the only time in weeks Richie’s ever actively _wanted_ to smile and his composure breaks when he catches the tears in the corner of Bill’s eyes, a wide grin stretching lazily across his face.  
  
“Laugh it up, Billiam. At least my new phone can probably survive a nuclear war and doesn’t bend just because someone wears jeans too tight.”  
  
-  
  
Richie realizes relatively quickly that there’s a couple problems that come with choosing an unabashed piece of junk as his replacement phone. Namely that Richie cannot remember phone numbers for the _life_ of him.  
  
Now had Richie gotten a second iPhone, there was the minor possibility of taking his waterlogged, crack screened original device to the store and transferring off the data if it was at all salvageable. Which then would, in the very least, give him back his contact numbers. Numbers which Richie desperately needs if he ever wants to let his manager know he’s not dead in a ditch somewhere. He’s only emotionally dead in a small town no one has ever heard of.  
  
As it were, Richie’s screwed in the number department. He only remembers his mom’s after much internal debate about the order of the last two digits and doesn’t remember anything past the first three numbers of his manager’s. He’s trying to recall literally anyone else’s when he remembers a small piece of paper he’s had stuffed down in his duffel bag the last two weeks, fingers tracing the names after he’s stumbled his way over and pulled the paper out.  
  
The last name on the list almost shines in the table lamp lighting of his darkened room. He drags his eyes away and creates a contact for each of the other names and numbers, mumbling them back to himself to make sure he’s gotten them right before finding himself staring at the last one again.  
  
_**Eddie Kaspbrak -(917)-555-0138**_  
  
It’s stupid, he _knows_ it is. At the other end of that number is nothing but heartbreak when the line leads to nothing but a voicemail box. If he’s lucky, it’ll have a personalized message and he’ll sob the rest of his day away in his room, listening to the same brief recording over and over again. And if he’s unlucky, as he often is, it’ll lead to a disconnected number and he’ll still end up crying his day away.  
  
So. It’s stupid and will lead to absolutely _nothing_ good but Richie still puts the contact in his phone. He hesitates a moment before hitting call, bringing the device to his ear with shaking hands. The line rings and rings and rings before a blurry sounding voice greets him.  
  
“Hi, you’ve reached Edward Kaspbrak. I can’t come to the phone right now but if you’ll - “  
  
Richie hangs up. He breathes deep through his nose and out through his mouth. He remembers all of the things a shrink he had a couple years back told him about learning to deal with his issues, remembers thinking none of it worked because there was something irreparably fucked within him. Remembers that now he has a name attached to the deep seated loss he’s carried with him since he was eighteen years old, feeling for all the world that he would remember what he was missing if he just tried a little harder.  
  
Richie breathes and breathes some more but in the end he still ends up balled up on his bed, red faced and sobbing.  
  
-  
  
He’s half asleep when it happens.  
  
“What the fuck?” Richie says, furrowing his brows behind his smudged up glasses, pressed firmly against his face during his sleep. The phone, which has found its way to the edge of the bed, is ringing.  
  
Richie sits up, rubbing his jaw and frowning at the surprisingly loud noise it’s emitting. The most likely possibility is a spam caller but earlier he _had_ called his mom once to make sure he’d gotten the number he’d remembered right. He lets it ring until it goes to voice mail, figuring if it’s anything or anyone important then they’ll leave a message and he can just call them back tomorrow.  
  
He’s just about to lay back down and forget all about the whole ordeal when it starts ringing again. Richie sighs and stretches his hand toward the end of the bed, fingers wrapping around the vibrating block of plastic.  
  
His breath catches in his throat when he reads the number, his entire body reacting to it before his brain quite can. Bev told him in the murky hours between defeating Pennywise and his alcohol tainted memories of the night that proceeded about her experience in her old apartment.  
  
“It was so weird,” she’d said, confusion writ in her tired features. “She’d - _he’d_ said ’ _no one who dies here ever really dies’_. I think he was taunting me, ya know?”  
  
Richie did know, thought for sure that it had been nothing more than a way of throwing in Bev’s face that they hadn’t killed It as kids. It had a tendency to be rather predictable in it’s reasoning, almost childlike in the taunts It made. Hindsight twenty twenty, maybe they’d both underestimated what It was saying.  
  
Richie answers the phone, his hand shaking so hard against his ear he’s afraid he’ll drop it.  
  
“Hello?” he says, barely a whisper in the night. There’s a gasp on the other end, something that sounds like another voice following it.  
  
“Richie?”  
  
And like that, Richie’s entire world narrows down to the soft breathing on the other side of the line, blurs into nothing but the emotion strung syllables of his own name.  
  
“ _Fuck,_ ” he says and it sounds like the gasp for air after he’s swam back to the top of the quarry, like he hasn’t been breathing since Neibolt or maybe he’s been holding his breath since he was thirteen years old.  
  
Richie pulls the phone away with his heart hammering in his chest, the caller ID still proudly proclaiming _Eddie Kaspbrak_ against the dark room.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has slowly become my baby since starting it and I’m super hype to be posting it finally. I probably won’t follow an update schedule because I suck at those but maybe expect a monthly update? That might not kick me in the ass so I guess we’ll see. 
> 
> Also if you want to see info about updates on the fic, want to rant about these dumb forty year olds, or want to be an actual angel and beta future chapters for me you can find me @charlieiscrying on twitter or @trashkingsandtireswings on tumblr!!


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